Encyclopedia > Ifni

  Article Content

Ifni

Ifni was a Spanish colony on the African coast, in what is now Morocco, south of Casablanca and across from the Canary Islands. It had a total area of 1,502 sq km (580 sq mi), and a population in 1964 of 51,517. The main industry was fishing.

Spain had a settlement called Santa Cruz de Mar Pequefla 1476-1524, but it's unknown if it was at the current site of Ifni.

The territory and its main town, Sidi Ifni, were ceded by Morocco to Spain on October 22, 1859 following a short war, but there was little Spanish presence until 1934, when the governor-general[?] of Spanish Sahara[?] took up residence. Spain returned Ifni to Morocco on January 4 (or June 30?), 1969.

Spain began issuing postage stamps for Ifni in 1941, initially overprinting[?] Spanish stamps with "TERRITORIO DE IFNI", then issuing new designs in 1943. Issues followed at the rate of about 10/year, the last on November 23, 1968. Most are commonly available, but far more often seen unused, raising suspicion that the stamps were primarily issued to make money from stamp collectors, not to cope with a flood of mail from the residents.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Canadian Music Hall of Fame

... Complete list of Inductees 1978 Guy Lombardo 1978 Oscar Peterson 1979 Hank Snow 1980 Paul Anka 1981 Joni Mitchell 1982 Neil Young 1983 Glenn ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 30.6 ms